


Unstable Hope

by TheQueen



Series: Forge [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Major Character Injury, Pidge does her best and kick's ass, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:51:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueen/pseuds/TheQueen
Summary: After months of being trapped on this planet, Lance falls ill. Pidge won’t let herself lose another brother.A Commission





	Unstable Hope

Once when Pidge is seven and she’s in love with Iron Man, the brightly colored comic pages laid out caringly on the kitchen counter as she rattles on to her mother about the complexities of the multiverse, her father jokes that she’s one day she’ll grow up to be just as heroic and clever as Iron Man. 

She frowns, wrinkles her nose and staring down at the lovingly inked face of her hero taking a punch and says, “I don’t want to be a hero.” 

.

Once she dares to sneak off as Lance pretends to rest. She makes her way back to their crash site to see Green. Still as wrecked as the moment Pidge first laid eyes on her on this strange new world. She tries everything to get Green’s shields down. Knocks and pounds and begs. The longer she stands there the stronger Green’s presence in her mind grows, until, for a second, her shield wavers before she disappears leaving an empty space in the back of Pidge’s mind like a lost limb she hadn’t known she had.

Lance says it’s the same with Blue. Silence.

She can see her in the distance, the great Blue Lion half-buried in a lake. The crash was nowhere near as messy as Green’s, broken along the tree line and half-propped by a mountain. Pidge had been no better off -- not lucky like Lance was, landing on soft earth in the safety of a full suit of armor.

She understands why Lance worries. She understands why he watches her with bright, glassy eyes when he thinks she isn’t looking.

She doesn’t stay long.

.

Once when she was thirteen and coming to the slow realization she’d never be the spitfire Pepper Potts who walked on seven inch heels and commanded a room with a single step, she began to explore her family’s greatest love: space.

Once when she was fourteen she watches her brother and father board a ship to Pluto.

Once when she was fifteen she followed them.

. 

Then comes the morning when Lance cannot wake up. No. That’s not true. He can. She watches him from her place by the entrance in the tent. But he looks weak. He calls to her, disoriented. When he forces himself up, he stumbles and lets Pidge catch him, his body no more than dead weight in her arms.

She carries him carefully outside as he mumbles, broken words that are anything but reassuring. She’s crying as she places her hand against his head and jerks away when it feels too hot.

_ He’s feverish _ , Pidge realizes. Flushed red-hot and disoriented. How long had he felt sick? How long had he hid it from her?

Not for the first time she curses him, this forest, their situation. Damn her leg. Damn this jungle. Damn Lance and his stupid, deadly-overprotective instincts _. He’s going to die here _ , she thinks. She thinks rationally. She doesn’t have any antibiotics. Their med kits have nearly run out. And Green is still too damaged to be of any use. 

Logically, he’s going to die here. 

But she won’t let him, logic be damned. She is the Green Paladin of Voltron. She is injured and she is hurting, but Lance needs her. So she grits her teeth and moves, rips the wall of the tent down and creates a makeshift sled.

She doesn’t have the medication, but  _ they _ might. 

They’re huge, these aliens. Taller than the Galra and stronger from the way they lift the stone gate in the front of their village. They tower over her when they stand. They screech when they speak. Pidge understands now why Lance was so wary to ask for help. 

But they do not have time now. Lance makes a heart-wrenching coughing noise from behind her and she gestures pointedly towards him, her translator long broken in the crash. They stare at her and then at him and then at her. One speaks to another who speaks to another. Finally, a new one arrives, taller than all the others.

Pidge waits and wonders if she is standing trial. 

Finally, the tallest one speaks in broken Altean, “We know you. Bring your people in return for payment.”

“This is my people,” she responds. “He is…” She tries to find the Altean word for fever and settles on, “dying.”

They laugh. “Payment will be arranged. Then life. We know you. You have taken from us. But we will forgive for payment.”

Pidge nods. Payment.  _ Payment _ . She will give anything in return for Lance. She follows the tallest one into the village and watch as the others take Lance. 

She will not lose another brother.

.

Once when she’s eight, she’s asked to write who her hero is for her class prompt and she writes something generic, something simple about her family: her mother, probably, or her father. She’d write how they did things for her that she hadn’t learned how to do yet and that they always made her feel better.

After school, she shows the essay to her brother, who reads it as she scribbles along the edges of his textbook in highlighter green, drawing the faces of cats over the words she thinks are interesting. 

When he’s done, he ruffles her hair and shut the essay in his drawer to show their mother when she gets home and helps her sound out the syllables for all the word she’s marked with cats. 

.

Her payment is to the lost family. 

Lance had apparently killed someone. Their face is carved abstractly into a piece of wood that hangs above their fireplace. Incense that smells like the forest sits lit underneath in respect for the dead. 

“I am sorry for your loss,” she says in Altean. It is one of the few phrases she knows well. The family stares at her for a moment and then nods and hands her an incense to light. 

They set her in the garden with a hoe and make the motion of turning the earth. She sets the tool in the ground and starts walking. She grew up in Idaho where the farms stretched for miles and miles and the sky was a faint blue, endless. Pushing the rake through the earth is the closest she’s come to humanity in what feels like eons. 

When she’s done for the day, the family feeds her leftovers and reports to a large alien (a man she recognized from the markings along his face and arms) at the door. He grunts and whispers in broken Altean, “She speaks well then?”

“Very well,” the mother says. “Too little. With words I do not know.” 

Pidge watches them warily from her seat on the table (the chair is so high she has to jump up and down) picking at her stew. That night, she sleeps with her bayard tucked close under her pillow.

.

When she finishes her chores for the family early, they let her visit Lance in their sick bay. It takes her three trips to realize it’s Altean, seven to realize he’s been placed in a horizontal healing pod that’s half-falling apart, half-melting into the ground. 

“It’ll work better if it’s upright,” she says without thinking first in English and when the Elder, the tallest one she had struck a deal with all those days ago, grunts for her to repeat, she says in broken Altean. “Vertical better. Help circu-” she pauses, feeling the word in her mouth, before confidently saying, “circulation.”

The Elder squints at her and then gestures to the pod. “It has always been so.”

Pidge shakes her head and frowns. The markings on the walls, faded as they were, were Altean. The lines. The architecture. How had it taken her so long to realize? “I fix,” Pidge says, patting her chest for emphasis. “My payment is fixing.”

The Elder shakes their head and turns away.

.

Pidge doesn’t stop trying. 

When she finishes her chores for the family the next day, faster and faster with each iteration, she makes her way to the healing room. She bullies her way past the guards and props open the control panel and fixes three wires before anyone can pry her away. 

The floor lights up.

The doctors murmur uncertainly. The nurses restraining Pidge cry out and lets go. Lance in his pod stirs for the first time in ages, sighing. If Pidge didn’t know better, she could convince herself it was a sound of relief.

When the Elder arrives, they are livid. A bright splotchy blue around their neck and the markings on their face (so Altean, how had Pidge not seen!) burning. “What did you do?”

“I fixed it.” She gestures first to the floor and then to Lance. “I know Alteans.”

That gets everyone in the room whispering and muttering. Pidge holds her ground. She’s always been the smallest in the room. Kids. Adults. Government officials. Aliens. She’s always held her ground. 

“Prove it.” The Elder points to something behind her. “Fix it.”

Pidge doesn’t waste another moment. She can’t pay a life in chores. She can’t waste away trying, either. But this… she can save with this. She can heal with this, the life of many over one. 

She gets to work.

.

Once when she’s ten and still young enough to enjoy comic books, she gets into a fight over whether or not Iron Man is a hero. 

Looking back, it’s a stupid fight. Pidge is smarter than that; she’s always been smarter than that. But hearing Brandon insist that Iron Man wasn’t a hero hits her in a way she’s never been able to put into words, not when her teacher asks, not when her parents ask, not even when Matt asks. 

“He doesn’t win,” Brandon insists the next day, sprouting a bruise on his cheek. He’s holding out the latest copy of The Ultimates, the cover illustrating Tony Stark behind bars. “Heroes win.”

.

She gets their medical console working in two days, has to scavenge for parts in their archive rooms, a glorified scrap heap of ancient Altean artifacts they’d found throughout the centuries under their feet or in the forest.

The Elder has taken to keeping her company, towering behind her shoulder as she works and helping with the heavy lifting. At some point they start talking.

“Myths, huh?” Pidge prods as she saulders two wires together. “Makes sense. They went into hiding.”

‘Hiding’ because it’s easier to say than ‘genocide’ or ‘extinction.’  _ Technically _ , Pidge thinks,  _ Coran and Allura are an endangered species _ . 

“Because of  _ Galra _ ?” The Elder has a book propped open on their knees. Not everyone in the village is literate in true Altean. Most speak and read a variation of sorts. It probably started as a dialect and morphed into its own language over the years. 

“Your demons,” Pidge agrees. 

The Elder stares at their book for a moment. “You bring too much.”

“Payment.” Pidge points to the wires in front of her and then to Lance on the other side of the room. 

“Too much,” the Elder says.

“Then favor.” Pidge smiles. 

The Elder squints at her and then laughs, a deep booming sound. 

Pidge laughs back. After all, she has a plan.

.

Once when she’s thirteen and stuck at home while her brother excels at the Garrison, she turns from comic books to space, from glossy covers of red and gold to the deep blues and purples of the universe, the spots of light, the bursts of color.  

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” her father says as she flips through his magazines. 

“Beautiful,” Pidge agrees.

.

She fixes the console. Then she fixes the healing pod and the glorified tractor they’d been hand-pulling for years. And then the the lights in the temple.

She fixes and fixes and does chores in the morning, every morning, because she still remembers the abstract carving over the fireplace and the family of mourners. 

And when she’s done and the Elder says her payment is complete, she asks for one more thing.

.

Years later, she realizes why Brandon had made her so mad. 

Heroes aren’t defined by their victories, is what she should have said. Heroes aren’t defined by how often they win or who they defeat. Heroes are defined by choices. Heroes get up and get up and get up and they sell their soul to try and do the right thing even when they fail.

Heroes aren’t born, she realizes in the light of the newly-restored temple beacon. Heroes are forged.

.

Lance wakes three days later, drool crusting on the edge of his mouth. Pidge snaps a photo with the flash on because she can, because he’s not dead and he’ll live long enough to complain about it. 

When the doctors clear him, he takes Pidge’s hand, walks across the village to the door of the family she’d been made for work for when this all began, and apologizes with his head bowed. “I am sorry for your loss.”

The mother reaches out and Pidge feels Lance tense in her arms, feels him going for his bayard because it’s a trained response after all this time. “I cannot forgive,” the mother says, patting Lance lightly. 

Lance looks up and nods. 

“Do you regret taking him?” the mother asks. At Lance’s confused face, Pidge translates. 

“No,” Lance says, after a moment. “We needed what we took. We would have died. He tried to stop me.”

Pidge wants to stop him, wants to slam her hand over his mouth before he undoes anymore of her work when he surprises her by taking the mother’s hand. “Survival,” Lance emphasizes.

The mother nods and they stand there for a moment in absolute silence. Their only connection is Lance’s hand wrapped around her finger.

“Go,” the mother finally says, taking her hand away. “Go and do not come back.”

Then she closes the door.

.

It’s too good to last.

“Our demons are coming,” The Elder says three days later, as Pidge stares at the console in growing horror.  _ “Galra.”  _

“How long until they come?” Lance asks in English, because his Altean needs improving. 

“Ten… twelve days?” Pidge shrugs and then repeats the same in Altean for the Elder. “Soon.”

“Then we prepare,” Lance says in Altean, nodding sternly. “Voltron… the Alteans will come. We must wait until they do.”

Pidge thinks about payment.

.

Lance is the one who trains them. As Pidge fixes their weapons and their shields, he teaches them battle, draws strategies into the dirt and helps them to strengthen their technique. In the chaos, every alien is called on board. The young, the old, the frail all help Pidge carry stones to the wall as Pidge sows their infrastructure with a light shield strong enough to take a few blasts. 

“Blue will come,” Lance promises one night, two days before the Galra arrive. “We talked. She’s in pain but she won’t let these people burn for caring for us.”

“Allura still hasn’t made contact with us,” Pidge says after a moment, staring out the window. 

Lance makes a sound of assent. 

Outside, the preparations for war march on despite the hour: the stomping of feet, the thud of stone and metal and mortar, the calls for supplies. These people could -- would die, Pidge thinks. These people who dared to house them, help them...

“I don’t mind going out like this,” Pidge decides, turning to Lance, “making a stand here. Dying here… This is what heroes do. Right?”

“Don’t be such a defeatist. We’ll figure it out. Together,” Lance echoes. It takes her a moment to realize those are her words echoed back at her. In the darkness he takes her hand in his. “We’re Paladins of Voltron. We’re defenders of the universe. We’re a team. They’ll come. Dead or alive, they’ll come for us. This… this is what we’re here to do.”

Pidge takes a deep breath and smiles. 

.

The Galra come, breaching the atmosphere in a flash of purple. The Elder looks down and Pidge nods, a grim promise on her face. Besides her Lance grips his bayard as he keeps his eyes on the horizon. 

Voltron will come. Pidge knows it. Lance knows it. The Elder is starting to believe. 

For now they hold the battlefront.

.

Once when she is sixteen and too young and too naive and too stubborn to do anything else, she joins a war and becomes a goddamn motherfucking hero.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't originally planning to write a sequel to Random Paranoia until I was commissioned. Honestly this ended up being a really fun character study of Pidge that I enjoyed writing.
> 
> Shoutout to my betas TheMaelStromWrites@AO3 and sunshine#1537@Discord!!
> 
> As always please let me know what you think!
> 
> And you can check me out at thequeen117.tumblr.com!


End file.
